BIO

My name is Samantha Wells, and I am currently a third-year student at Florida State University. I am pursuing a dual degree in Statistics and Psychology. I am originally from Brazil and moved to the United States during my Junior year of high school. Being a part of UROP has really helped me understand a little more about research and how it is conducted, and this is only the beginning for me. As someone who is interested in going to Graduate school and pursuing research as a future career, I am very excited to be presenting this research at my first symposium. In my free time, I enjoy hanging out with my roommates and reading books.

Trauma and Aggressive Fantasies as Predictors of Criminal Involvement in an Internet Sample

Abstract

Research on the predictive relationship between aggressive fantasies on aggressive behavior has been contradictory. Different research has shown that aggressive fantasies can be a predictor of violence and that these fantasies can also decrease this aggressive behavior. However, the goal of this study was to understand how a mediating factor such as adverse childhood experiences would affect the relationship between aggressive fantasies and aggressive behavior. Three different scales were used during this research: The Adverse Childhood Experiences scale (used to measure the total number of adverse experiences in a person’s childhood), Criminal Involvement Scale (a 47-item scale that measures the criminal involvement of a person), and Aggressive Fantasies Scale (7-item scale that measures how often people think, imagine or daydream about harming others). Subjects were recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, with a total of 357 subjects, 145 male and 211 female, with a mean age of 33.92 years. Moreover, the race of the participants was as follows: 245 (68.6%) white, 98 (27.5%) black, 2 (0.6%) Native American, 12 (3.4%) other or no reported. Our results found that a person who has aggressive fantasies and ACES is more likely to act on their aggressive tendencies and engage in types of criminal behavior than a person with only aggressive fantasies. This means that a person with aggressive fantasies alone is less likely to engage in criminal acts than a person with aggressive fantasy and ACES.

Keywords: Psychology Criminology ACE Aggressive Fantasies